Beti Hohler is a Slovenian national who lives in the Netherlands. Like tens of millions of other Europeans, she uses Apple’s app store and has an Amazon account. When she travels for work or leisure, she may want to book a place on Airbnb or Booking, using a credit card issued by Visa or Mastercard, perhaps through PayPal.
But when the Trump administration sanctioned her last year for her work as a judge at the international criminal court (ICC), her ability to use any of these services vanished overnight. Her credit cards, her accounts with US companies – all gone. The sanctions against Hohler and some of her colleagues mean they live in “constant uncertainty”, she said.
The ICC judges’ ordeal is an extreme instance of a reality Europe is starting to reckon with: the Trump administration’s confrontational political approach towards the EU has exposed the continent’s dangerous dependence on US technology.
The US tech market’s dominance is nothing new; increasingly, the danger is that this technological power could be turned against Europe politically. Elon Musk has already used his respective ownership of X and Starlink to interfere in European public debate and influence the war in Ukraine. And the US government has ordered the AI company Anthropic to limit foreign nationals’ access to its products on security grounds.
What if Washington were to cut off Europe’s access to US advanced chips during a trade dispute, or exploit its control of social media and cloud computing to spy on European governments and influence elections? Given that the EU relies on non-EU countries for more than 80% of its technology and 70% of its cloud computing, as well as the Trump administration’s commitment to “cultivating resistance” in Europe, none of this seems too far-fetched.
In response to these dangers, the European Commission published its highly anticipated digital “sovereignty package” to boost homegrown European technologies and shield the EU from foreign interference. Seen as a whole, last week’s package is a welcome, if belated, recognition that dependence on US tech companies isn’t just an economic problem – it’s a direct threat to the continent’s independence, resilience and security.
Its centrepiece is the Cloud and AI Development Act (Cada), which would create a ranking system for cloud providers handling public-sector data – such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or France’s OVHCloud. In theory, the most sensitive operations and data – particularly those relating to national security and law enforcement – would be reserved for providers that met the highest sovereignty standards, establishing a clear preference for European providers.
While the framework may help shield Europeans from foreign surveillance and give a small boost to European cloud alternatives, it is undermined by some major flaws. For one thing, the strictest assurance level – the only one where US big tech would be banned from…
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